HIGH-IMPACT PRACTICE: COMMON INTELLECTUAL EXPERIENCES (CIEs)
General Considerations
This is the least specific and perhaps most difficult to define of the HIPs, in part because:
1. It can take many forms, ranging from an extracurricular common reading program
(e.g., One Book, One Denver) to a set curriculum, for instance a fixed slate of general
education courses required for all incoming freshman.
2. It overlaps with multiple other HIPs: First-Year Seminars, Learning Communities,
and Collaborative Assignments & Projects all are CIEs. Thus this HIP must refer to all
other forms of CIEs than those.
Here is the Association of American Colleges & University’s (AAC&U’s) cursory definition:
The older idea of a “core” curriculum has evolved into a variety of modern forms, such as a
set of required common courses or a vertically organized general education program that
includes advanced integrative studies and/or required participation in a learning
community. These programs often combine broad themes—e.g., technology and society,
global interdependence—with a variety of curricular and cocurricular options for students.
CIEs are shared by a cohort of students, faculty, and staff; they build community, interactive
engagement, and co-learning, typically also involving negotiation of different views. Of the
“Eight Key Elements” that distinguish high-quality HIPs, they typically involve at least four:

Interaction with faculty and peers about substantive matters;

Experiences with diversity, wherein students are exposed to and must contend with
people and circumstances that differ from those with which students are familiar;

Periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning; and

Opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications.
Examples of CIEs
Virtually every university course is itself, in toto, a CIE. Individual courses may include
multiple specifically designed CIEs, such as shared assignments, teamwork projects, etc.
The curriculum of a major may be designed to be a CIE, in part to the extent that a cohort of
students progresses through it together.
Perhaps the most common form of the CIE is the common reading program. That may in
part be because it is both the simplest, in terms of the number of moving parts (one book),
and the most inclusive: potentially everyone on a campus or in a city could participate.
Indiana University offers each year a Them-es-ter program, an umbrella of centrally funded
and organized events, speakers, readings, etc. in which individual courses and programs
may participate.
Highly developed examples of CIEs on the CU Denver campus include the University
Honors and Leadership Program and the BA/BS-MD Program. Those programs are
intentionally and comprehensively designed for cohorts of students. Other examples
include first-year and/or senior-year required curricula, for instance in CAM or CEAS.
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The general-education Core might qualify as a CIE, but less so to the extent it becomes a
menu of courses from which students pick, sometimes on the criterion of scheduling,
without any linkages either between those courses or between the students who take them.
How might one design an undergraduate Core such that it is a CIE? One answer may be to
move away from a “distribution model” core to themes that link diverse learning
experiences or competencies that bridge general education, majors, and co-curriculum. The
San Francisco State University website on CIEs states in this regard:
At present, common intellectual experiences are reflected in the more flexible and broad
concept of core course requirements that are often organized around themes. A university,
for example, might require that all students must satisfy general education requirements in
a number of domains and do so for the purpose of meeting institutional commitments to see
that students are familiar with certain knowledge, such as civic organization and
government, digital technology, quantitative reasoning, or composition.
In a similar vein, Texas A&M emphasizes that the keys to CIEs are integration of learning
across multiple experiences and reflection by students upon their learning and the
integration of those diverse experiences. Their website states:
What are the characteristics of common intellectual experiences? The key characteristics
of common intellectual experiences include: combining broader themes, linking learning
across different courses, and encouraging students to think holistically about several
different issues beyond individual.
Why should reflection be used to facilitate this high-impact practice? . . . . Integrating
reflection activities that will prompt students to identify what they have learned, both
explicitly as well as implicitly from their positive and negative course learning experiences,
will prepare them for addressing future challenges they will likely face as they advance in
their careers.
Such approaches point toward the role in creating a comprehensive CIE of shared crosscurriculum learning outcomes, such as the Essential Learning Outcomes.
Dimensions of CIEs
Three dimensions of CIEs may provide structure in thinking about how to work on building
them into curriculum:
1. Level of inclusion or scale, whether the assignment, the course, the degree or the
department, the school/college, or the entire undergraduate curriculum.
2. Number of components: Is it a single shared experience or event or is it comprised
of multiple components, e.g., multiple courses, co-curricular events, etc.?
3. Degree of integration: What are the expectations of faculty, staff, and students to
synthesize learning, methods, or themes across courses, events, co-curriculum, etc.?
Thus a group conversation about CIEs might need to clarify these questions:

What is the cohort of students for whom we want to build a CIE? At what scale do
we want to work; what level seems most appropriate to our interests or the
interests of our group?
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
How many educational experiences do we want to include in this CIE? To what
extent is interdisciplinarity appropriate, desirable, and feasible?

If multiple educational experiences are included, to what extent might they be
formally integrated, rather than simply paired? What are the mechanisms for
integration and synthesis of learning? What would faculty, staff, and students need
to do to create this integration?

To what extent might we link in co-curricular reinforcement and application?

Have we considered equity of access and, potentially, content in the CIE?

To what extent do we want this CIE to engage community-based learning or
employer-oriented learning and to what extent might it generate solutions to realworld issues and needs?

To what extent might we link in co-curricular reinforcement and application?
A CIE may be a single event for a small cohort of students and have significant value to
those students. Or, it may be designed specifically for the students within a major, perhaps
also linking to general-education goals, for instance in scaffolding a writing-in-thedisciplines course as a continuation of Core Composition. Or, it may be a large, integrated
program that brings together all undergraduates and integrates learning across multiple
disciplines, general education, and co-curriculum, with synthesis as a primary objective.
The most ambitious definition of a CIE might be something like this:
Common Intellectual Experiences: An intentionally designed group of learning
experiences (e.g., courses, co-curricula, community-based activities), in which learning in
one experience is developed and strategically applied in a linked experience. This includes
the horizontal integration of several courses by a shared “big idea” theme or vertical
integration, as in scaffolded curriculum, either within a major or linking gen-ed core courses
to more advanced applications in major courses. These experiences frequently are
multidisciplinary and team-learning-based.
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